You're Not in This Alone

I held Ebony in my arms. I'd just woken up from the worst dream I'd ever had. She was shaking because I wouldn't tell her about it. I couldn't tell her.

I held her for the rest of the night, unable to let go and fall asleep. Even when she stopped shaking and fell asleep herself, I couldn't calm down. I could feel my subconscious tugging me, urging me to fall asleep so I could have the rest of the prophetic dreams I was supposed to have that night, but I resisted.

None of the dreams I was supposed to have were significant. They were nothing compared to the nightmare that had caused me to wake up with a tear on my cheek. I desperately hoped that it could remain just that; a nightmare that wouldn't come true. But I knew it couldn't. It had to come true. All of my dreams did.

Telling Ebony about it would've been cruel, though. I knew it would hurt her way more if I told her, but I still felt terrible for keeping it from her. Either way I was hurting her. There was no way for me to win. I just had to pick the way that would cause her the least amount of pain.

So I wouldn't tell her, and I wouldn't tell anyone else. It would be my own little secret; my own little burden. Why had I dreamt it if I couldn't tell anyone and I couldn't change it? Why had I been condemned to know this information? Why did I dream about the future at all? Who or what decided what I dreamt about? I spent the rest of that night asking myself those pointless questions. I didn't come up with any good answers, not that I'd really expected to.

At breakfast that morning Ebony explained to us what would happen that day. She was beginning to know more and more things every day. I wondered if she was getting more powerful, or if it was just a coincidence.

I was upset when I found out I would be spending the day without Ebony. I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible even though my nightmare wouldn't come true for a while. It didn't seem fair to me that Leo and Shelby weren't getting split up. Neither were Lance and Miranda. I didn't really believe in a God anymore, but I knew that if there was, he must've really been out to get me.

Just before Nadia teleported us to our different states, I told her to wait. I needed to remind Ebony that I loved her. She was already looking distressed and like she was under an unbelievable amount of pressure. I wished she could forget about the night before, but I knew it was impossible to erase. From now on there would be something between us, no matter how hard we tried to get past it. Things could never be the same. Not that we had much time left anyways.

All too soon what I saw before my eyes changed abruptly, and I got the strange, disorienting feeling of teleportation. Instead of the deck, the house, and the trees of the backdrop I'd become familiar with, I saw a street of smaller houses. On the horizon was a line of huge, beautiful mountains.

I turned to Sarah wearily. "Sarah, can you hear him?"

It only took her a second to answer. "Yes, he's a few hundred feet that way, in a house," she said, pointing down the street.

I nodded, feeling almost as bad for the boy as I felt for myself. He was so young. Ebony had said he was Sarah's age, and he's been living on his own with everyone around him dead for... a week. It's been a week now.

The sun was still rising in Colorado, since it was three hours behind New York's time. It made everything feel as if it wasn't real.

"We'll walk to him," I told Sarah and Nadia. "We don't want to scare him. I'm surprised he's even awake."

I suppose that we were the best group of people to find a little boy, since our group of people consisted of two very young girls and me. I would be the scariest person out of all of us.

We walked up to the front door of the house Sarah had pointed to. "You knock and call to him," I whispered so quietly that only Sarah and her bionic ears could hear. "We don't want to startle him with my voice, and he'll trust you two best."

Sarah nodded and knocked timidly on the front door. "Hello?" she called sweetly. "My name is Sarah, and I'm here with my two friends Nadia and Gerard. We know some other people that are alive, too, and we came to see if you wanted to come live with us. Could you please open the door so we can come in and talk to you?"

And the door opened almost before she had finished talking. He was tall for ten years old. His blonde hair was cut very short, but his eyes stood out the most. The whites of his eyes were pure as could be, but his irises were stranger than anything I'd ever seen.

The outer ring was a dark brown color, but the inside of his irises were bright yellow, as yellow as a buttercup flower. Bolts of light brown struck through the yellow like lightning and broke it into pieces. His pupils were the normal black color. And I'd thought Miranda's moss-green eyes had been unusual.

To my surprise, he smiled at us. He was looking directly at Sarah as if he knew she's been the one speaking. "Hello, Sarah," he said straight to her. His young voice gave away his true age and proved that his height was deceiving.

She stumbled over her words when she replied, "Hi, this is Nadia and Gerard. She's twelve he's seventeen, and I'm ten. What's your name?"

"I'm Skyler," he normally introduced himself. "I'm ten." He stuck out his hand. Sarah shook it first, and then Nadia. He looked me straight in the eye when he shook mine. I liked him already. He was strong.

"Nice to meet you," I said awkwardly, feeling as if I was talking to an adult. "You've been living here by yourself for the past week?"

"Well we want you to come back to New York with us," Sarah said, and then she started babbling, "We have six other people with us there, and they went out to find four more when we came here to find you today. They're all very nice, and I like them."

His grim look changed into one of curiosity when he asked, "How did you know I was here? How did you get home from New York so quickly? Who's been talking in my head?"

Sarah and Nadia glanced at me. I took charge once again. "Try to believe us. It's going to be hard to believe, I know, but it's true."

"The boy who's been talking in my head us telepathic, isn't he?" Skyler asked.

We stared at him with wide eyes for a few seconds. "Well... Yes. That's Lance," I answered. "And we knew you were here because my girlfriend Ebony just knows things. And we got here so fast because Nadia teleports people. And we knew you were in this house because Sarah had amazing hearing."

Skyler seemed to accept this without question. "What do you do?" he inquired.

"Gerard has dreams," Nadia put in for me. "Sometimes they're about the past, present or future."

I almost winced. She'd reminded me of my nightmare.

"Do you... Are you special like us?" Sarah asked the boy, looking hopeful.

He grinned at her. "I have very good sight. Sometimes I can see through things if I want to."

That explains his eyes, I thought. Out loud, I said, "Do you want to come with us?"

"Of course," he said matter-of-factly. "Let me go pack some of my stuff."